[extropy-chat] 10th Planet Discovered

[Brent Neal]

 (3/15/04 9:10) Rik van Riel <riel at surriel.com> wrote:

>On Sun, 14 Mar 2004, Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
>> http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8968352%255E29098,00.html
>>
>> Named Sudna, it is 2000 km dia and 3 billion miles past Pluto..
>
>So, does anybody have detailed plans yet on how to
>colonise Kuiper Belt Objects ?
>
>We know there should be far more of these than there
>are planets, and they're full of precious ice...


Its seems to me that a necessary condition for any outer planet colonization is a manufacturing base outside of our gravity well.  I'm sure some will disagree, but unless we -vastly- improve the cost of putting a pound in orbit, even Mars remains a difficult colonization prospect.

I find the hype about Sudna to be an exceptionally amusing journalistic conceit, considering that many astronomers are proposing removing Pluto's 'planet' status. Categorically, it makes more sense to do that that to try to find some arbitrary size limit on KBOs that defines 'planet' or not.

B
-- 
Brent Neal
Geek of all Trades
http://brentn.freeshell.org

"Specialization is for insects" -- Robert A. Heinlein